What is Leadership?

If you go to Google and search for “definition of leadership”, you will probably find as many definitions of leadership as there are leaders. The concept of leadership is vast and complex, and has probably been well studied and worked on for centuries. There are many books on the subject, and many different approaches to the concept; Harvard University 1quotes the existence of over 15,000 books on leadership. The reality is that there are many types of leadership: family, professional, political, religious, etc. and basically everyone has their owndefinition, but if we were to give a more concrete definition of leadership, we would focus on this idea that the leader is someone who has a vision, who is able to anticipate the future and who empathizes enough with people to make them follow him.

Basically, we can define a leader as someone who is able to influence the people around him to achieve the goal he has set. To speak of leadership is to speak of influence. Leadership is, has been and will be an influence. If we look at the history of the great world leaders from an economic, social and family point of view, they are people who have been able to influence their environment to move in a certain direction.

Very often, this definition of leadership takes all its value when this leader is confronted with a crisis situation. Thus, the leader is defined by what he does and not by what he says.

As we have already noted, leaders are made, not born leaders. They are built with effort and hard work, but then: how can you become a leader? Without a doubt: by training, by reading and learning this discipline, by acquiring the necessary techniques that will allow you to develop these skills of influence etc. and by practicing! Leadership is also a verb; leadership is doing things!

Leaders have in common a deep level of awareness. This is combined with a great ability to understand their environment and to inspire others to follow them.

In this article, we intend to analyze the concept of leadership which is based on looking in, influencing around, and building and executing your vision.

To use the definition, we have been working on throughout this section, leadership is a set of skills that are used to influence the way others think or act, but this term should not focus on anything other than the idea of changing mindsets. Because the leader has the ability to take the initiative and bring innovative ideas, without giving orders.

Nor does leadership mean an unequal distribution of power. And even if the leader has the final say, it is teamwork that produces the best results. As an African proverb says: “If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk with others”. The leader wants to go far rather than walk fast.

We can therefore summarize that leadership is also known as a set of managerial skills, which a person has to influence the way of acting or being, of individuals or group of individuals in a given work, motivating this team to collaborate with enthusiasm to achieve the objective of all its goals and activities.

In addition, leadership is defined as the ability to manage, observe, initiate, convene, promote, motivate, encourage and evaluate a  project efficiently and effectively, whether for personal, professional or institutional purposes.

A leader’s job is to try to set a goal and get the majority of people to want and work towards that goal. This is essential in the professional and business environment, but also applies to other very different contexts such as education (teachers getting their students to agree with their way of thinking), sports (having the ability to lead the team to success) and even the family environment (in many cases, parents are held up as an example for their children).

Since leadership is the function of a person who stands out from the rest and is able to make good decisions for the group, team or organization that precedes him/her, inspiring the rest of the participants in that group to achieve a common goal, it is also said that leadership involves more than one person: the one who leads (the leader) and those who support him/her (the followers) and enable him/her to develop his/her position effectively.

The role of the leader is to set a goal and get most people to want it and work towards it. We emphasize this idea, but it is essential and fundamental to understanding leadership. In all the areas mentioned above, we were talking about formal leaders, but we can also talk about informal leaders, that is, those who emerge naturally or spontaneously within a group. In any case, the most widespread classification is the one that refers to the link between the leader and the subjects he/she influences (i.e., his/her followers).

A lot of literature and scientific research has tried to classify the types of leaders in several categories. We distinguish three basic types of leadership that we will develop throughout this post: democratic, authoritarian and liberal, and we will now only comment on them.

The democratic leader is the one who, first of all, encourages debate and discussion within the group. Then, he takes into account the opinions of his followers and only then, on the basis of explicit criteria and evaluation standards, makes a decision.

The authoritarian leader, on the other hand, is the one who decides alone, without consultation and without justifying himself to his followers. This type of leader uses one-way communication (no dialogue) with the collaborator or follower.

As for the liberal leader, he usually plays a passive role and cedes power to his group. This is why he does not judge the contribution of the members. He gives them the greatest freedom of action.

Regardless of the leadership style, the basic principles of a good leader are: to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field, to observe the work of other leaders and to change the way he or she works if necessary. On the other hand, the qualities that a leader must possess are: knowledge, confidence, integrity and, of course, a certain charisma to inspire his followers.

In summary, to conclude this post, leadership is above all marked by the context and the situation in which we find ourselves. It can result from different circumstances and events that have taken place. Leadership never comes out of nowhere; the essence of leadership is contextual and is determined by people or events. It is fundamental to examine the context in which a person can become a leader to properly define and understand leadership.

For learn more about leadership click here